more exalted labours, they gradually raise themselves by the elevation of their thoughts almost to heaven itself. Favoured by fortune, they then often happily encounter some liberal prince who, finding his expectations amply satisfied, is compelled to remunerate their services in so liberal a manner, that their successors derive great advantage and important immunities from the labours thus rewarded. Such men then proceed through life with so much honour to the end, that they leave memorials which awaken the admiration of the world, as did Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo, who in their time were highly esteemed and honoured, for the rare acquirements to which with labour and pains they had attained.
These artists were born in the city of Florence, but few years after each other:[1] their father was a man of low condition, and not in easy circumstances; but he perceived, by various indications, the clear and just intelligence of his sons, and not having the means of obtaining a learned education for them, he placed Antonio with Bartoluccio Ghiberti,[2] then a very eminent master in his calling, to learn the art of the goldsmith, and Piero he sent to study painting with Andrea dal Castagno, who was at that time the best master in Florence. Antonio, therefore, being brought forward by Bartoluccio, employed himself, not only with the setting of jewels, and the preparation of silver enamelled in fire, but was, moreover, held to be the best of all who handled the chisel in that vocation, and Lorenzo Ghiberti, who was then working at the gates of San Giovanni, having remarked the ability of Antonio, employed him with many other young men to assist himself, setting him to execute one of those festoons with which he was at the moment occupied. Here Antonio produced a quail, which may still be seen, and is so beautiful, nay, so perfect, that it wants nothing but the power of flight. Antonio had not spent
- ↑ Their father was called Jacopo d’Antonio, and in one of the fiscal documents quoted by Gaye {Carteggio, &c., vol. i. pp. 265, 266), is styled Jacopo del Pollaiuolo, whence it would appear that the trade of a poulterer (pollaiuolo) was exercised by the grandfather of Antonio and Piero, not by their father.
- ↑ The step-father of Lorenzo Ghiberti. The reader who shall desire to see long discussions concerning the time when he assumed that relationship to the great artist, &c., 6cc., will find them in Rumohr and others.
